


the more that you appear

by ileliberte, Loz



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 20:01:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3949828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ileliberte/pseuds/ileliberte, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loz/pseuds/Loz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The pattern is this: Scott has seven consecutive nights of disturbingly lucid dreams that he is unable to change, transform or influence in any way, and then a number of years go by before he has them again. But he thinks about them. Entire months go by and little else occupies his thoughts. There’s another boy just out of reach, the same boy each time, and he grows with Scott.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the more that you appear

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to L for last minute beta-work. Huge thanks to ileliberte for her stunning artwork. Many thanks must also go to the mods of the sciles minibang <33333

Usually he finds himself in a large white room; stark fluorescent lighting and pristine tiles, but not this time. This time he’s surrounded by dark, ominous trees. How come he feels safer? There’s a large tree trunk a little to the left of him, roots spreading out far and wide, like questing tendrils. He can feel an electric, magnetic thrum emanating from the coiled, gnarled wood. It’s night time, the patches of sky he can see a deep blue. Endless.

And he isn’t alone. He never is. He can sense another body, can hear another heartbeat, another quick intake of breath. He knows he shouldn’t be able to hear that kind of detail, when the boy’s never _near_ him. But he can. Either the boy’s preternaturally loud or he’s preternaturally acute in his senses. It doesn’t really matter which. He can feel him there, as he has every time he dreams.

“Hello?” Scott calls, but the boy never answers. Not with words. When they finally see each other across the stretch of land and tree trunk between them, all he does is stare.

But perhaps, maybe, today will be different? The venue’s like something he’s never seen before, so there’s a chance, isn’t there?

Scott starts to advance, to walk around the dry, cracked wood. “Hi?”

He never seems to actually get closer. One step, two, three, the boy’s a fixed point like the horizon. There, but always over there. Never tangible, regardless of how it appears.

Speaking of appearance, the boy is slightly different from usual. He’s grown into his looks a little more, lost the baby fat he had the last time Scott saw him --- three years ago, when Scott was thirteen and he presumes the boy was too. His hair’s longer, not a buzzcut anymore. His speckled skin is pale, but more like he doesn’t tan as opposed to him being non-corporeal. He’s angular but not hard, full-featured but not exaggerated.

He’s handsome, Scott realizes with sudden clarity. He wonders why he never noticed that before, but it was probably because he didn’t care how people looked until a year ago. His mom said he was a late bloomer. He’s always thought he was preoccupied --- with his health, with school work, with a sense that he should be doing more, that he must have these dreams for a reason.

“Can you even hear me?” Scott asks across the void.

The boy looks straight at him, nods. When he was ten, Scott thought about learning sign language. He tried to influence his dreams by wishing for a pencil and paper. He stopped telling his mom about the dreams because she started making appointments for him to see a child psychologist.

“Would you talk if you could?” Scott asks this time, scuffing his toe into the dirt and rubbing at his arm.

The boy tilts his head to the side and nods again, eyes wide and beseeching. His mouth doesn’t open, but even from the distance Scott can see his jaw flex like he wants it to. Like his lips are glued shut. Not for the first time, Scott only has more questions. He makes to step forward again, but he awakens with a jolt, staring, mystified, around his room.

He remembers everything. He always does.

*

The pattern is this: Scott has seven consecutive nights of disturbingly lucid dreams that he is unable to change, transform or influence in any way, and then a number of years go by before he has them again. But he thinks about them. Entire months go by and little else occupies his thoughts. There’s another boy just out of reach, the same boy each time, and he grows with Scott. Scott can always sense him, sometimes even thinks he can predict his emotions (sorrowful, sad, like something’s missing, frustrated, angry, confused), feels like he _knows_ him, regrets never being able to talk to him, feels his absence when it seems like it’s been too long.

The dreams have been happening since Scott can remember. Since he used to tuck himself into his little bed, curled up on his side with his feet never straying near the bottom so the snakes couldn’t get his toes. They’ve been happening since Scott grew his milk teeth and lost his milk teeth. Since he first learned his abcs and was told, in no uncertain terms, that no one else has dreams like this.

His mom used to tell his dad Scott just had an imaginary friend. Scott always took offence. If he were going to have an imaginary friend, he’d have one that talked back, that he could go on adventures with, who’d stay with him when his asthma was bad. Not some kid who stared at him with golden-brown eyes and parted lips, like he was some exhibit at a museum.

He hadn’t liked talking to Dr. Clayton about it, so he’d gotten good at lying, at pretending the dreams had been a ploy for attention, that they hadn’t been real.

They always feel real. In the white room he can smell chlorine and a faint, human odor. In the forest he smelled rotting vegetation and woodland animals. All of Scott’s senses are heightened, the information they feed him clamoring for attention in his already crowded brain. Scott can never sleep properly for weeks after the dreams, can never concentrate on schoolwork, can never convince his friends he’s okay.

That’s partly why he chooses to sit at the lacrosse field during lunch time after the dreams have occurred. It’s a pity his friends don’t know that.

“Is it your asthma?” Aya asks, stroking her hand up his arm in a warm, friendly gesture.

“Yeah,” Scott lies, because none of his current friends know about this and he doesn’t want them to.

Bad enough he grew up with his dad convinced he should be institutionalized. He used to hear that and have no idea what it meant. Now, he knows. Now he understands why his mom used to yell at his dad. Now he recognizes that Rafael would not be the only one who believes this.

“I could take you to the school nurse?”

“I’ve used my inhaler. I’ll be all right. I need some time to catch my breath, that’s all.”

Aya’s boyfriend, Grant, sits next to her. He gives Scott a suspicious once-over. “Why do you look like death crawled outta your ass and invited you for dinner?”

“Because that’s precisely what happened,” Scott says with a shrug.

Aya taps Grant on the shoulder. “We had a talk about colorful metaphors and the best times to use them yesterday, didn’t we?”

“He’s okay, that was a simile,” Scott says with a small smile, holding his fist out to Grant for a bump behind Aya’s back.

Aya takes it in good humor, laughs about it, but still looks worried as she casts Scott a look. It’s her ‘you can’t take care of yourself’ look. Scott is well acquainted with it.

“I forgot about that conversation anyway,” Grant says. “I had it wiped, like in those ads.”

“What ads?”

“The memory cleanse ads that’ve been playing all day every day on radio and public broadcast television? All _Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind_? Put memories of bad experiences in their place; nowhere! They seriously need a better slogan writer.”

Aya shakes her head. “They have to be a hoax. If you can’t completely delete files off a computer, there’s no way you could delete memories from the human brain.”

“Maybe not, but you could sever the connection, right? I mean, Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases do that _no_ trouble.”

“But how could you be so specific? The risk would be astronomical.”

“It’d have to be worth it,” Scott agrees. “Do you think it’d only work on memories of things that have actually happened? Or do you think you’d be eligible for something like recurring nightmares?”

Grant raises his eyebrows, cocks his shoulder. “I dunno, man, I guess we gotta go find out.”

They talk about it longer, joke about it, dare each other to go and film the evidence, like daring to stay in a haunted house overnight, until it’s decided they’ll all go together. Scott wouldn’t explain his reasoning, Aya’s said hers was morbid fascination, Grant admitted that he liked to have at least one hair-raising experience every year --- remind him he’s still living.

But Scott thinks they know he wants to go. He thinks that they’re silently supporting him, like they always have, not turning it into a big deal. He thinks maybe they know more than they’ve ever let on, more than he’s ever said. And to be honest, he’s grateful.

*

It’s not the smartest thing they’ve ever done, driving into the abandoned section of Beacon Hills that was hit the worst during the first strike of the GFC. As every minute goes by, Scott feels his stomach bubbling, his heart jack-rabbiting, his lungs constricting like they do when he’s going to have an asthma attack.

This is a scam. It has to be. Perhaps it’s a way to lure unsuspecting fools into getting carjacked and left for dead? Maybe it’s a harmless practical joke or a social experiment, trying to get more people to look at the empty warehouses in this quarter, or the houses that squatters have taken residence in.

But as the pull up to the address, the place looks clean and clearly signed. There’s someone walking into the building – a neatly dressed woman in a pantsuit, hair perfectly coiffed. She looks harried, but determined. She storms into the building and straight up to the round reception desk in the middle of the room. The plate glass windows aren’t tinted, so it’s easy to see this and a coffee stand in the foyer, a bored-looking barista pouring syrup into a paper cup and three people sitting down at small, round tables.

“Fancy,” Grant says, with a whistle.

Aya looks down at her clothes with a worried frown, then sucks in a breath, seems to steel herself. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“They could wipe our minds, turn us into dolls and sell our bodies into all different kinds of slavery?” Grant returns, scowling at the building like he thinks they have listening equipment directed at the car.

“I knew it would be a mistake to include you in Whedonfest 2015. And not just because you hate half his shows.”

“You can’t honestly look in my direction and act like this isn’t a thing that could happen,” Grant says with a shake of his head, but his expression lightens within a moment and he leans over to tap Scott’s arm. “What do you think, amigo? Do we forge on ahead or run away with our tails between our legs?”

“I’m willing to find out more if you are?” Scott says, aware of how weak his voice sounds, how small. He may as well have the word ‘hesitant’ written on his forehead in black sharpie.

Curiosity is winning, though. Sheer, unadulterated wonder. He wants to _know_. He keeps thinking, if they could erase a bad memory, they could erase a bad dream. If he could get rid of his bad dreams, he could lead a semi-normal life. No more incessant thinking about the boy with sorrow in his eyes and patterns on his skin. No more questioning of his subconscious, of his psyche.

No more thinking that maybe he’s meant to be _more_.

He climbs out of the car, starts walking toward the building with a bounce in his step. The quicker he gets this over and done with, the more at ease he’ll be.

Pushing at the door and creeping into the foyer reminds Scott of the first day of school, of the first day of his job at the grocery store, of the first dance he ever went to, the first day of a new life. He’s getting ahead of himself. He probably wouldn’t even be able to pay for this procedure even if it were possible, but there’s no accounting for emotional responses.

The place is bigger than it had looked from outside; all glass and chrome and white. The seated people are murmuring quietly, the barista’s stacking napkins.

“How may I assist you?” an older, well-dressed man asks as Scott wanders close to the reception desk. He glances at Scott and then Aya and Grant. Scott half expects him to look at them like they’re some gunk on his shoe, but his smile appears genuine and his expression kind.

Can he say he’s just browsing?

“I was wondering about the services that you offer,” Scott says, finding his voice before his friends can. Before Grant pipes up with some joke. Though Grant looks a little shell-shocked, so he might have been unnecessarily quick to speak.

The man hands over a tablet --- sleek, white, so thin and curved it must be a demonstration model. He’d remember seeing anything close to its kind in a store.

Scott stares at the tablet, then back up at the man. “I, uh?”

The man swipes his hand over the display and it comes to life. Like everything in the building, it’s minimalistic, full of white space and sharp lines. The block of text is interspersed with stock photos of people smiling.

“Frequently asked questions,” he says. “Most of the information you seek is contained on this tablet, but if you have further inquiries we can make an appointment with one of our consultants.”

“Thanks,” Scott says, dazed. “Are we allowed to sit anywhere?”

“Of course. You can each order a hot beverage of your choice, free of charge,” the man --- Conrad, his name tag states. “But I have to warn you, you’re expected to pay for the second.” His eyes twinkle and he gestures to the plush seating in the corner.

“Is it just me or is it both too quiet and too nice here?” Grant asks sotto voce, casting his eyes about warily.

“Totally weird,” Aya agrees.

They snuggle up together on the couch and Scott brings the tablet back to life with a brush of his pointer finger. Scott reads the first part aloud, then Aya takes over as he takes prolonged sips of his mocha, and Grant gives his best dramatic reading of the final paragraph on the introductions page. They’re whisper quiet, but they still sometimes attract glares from the other patrons. Scott lets the words wash over him as different people are called to walk through a large set of chrome double doors at the far end of the room.

“You don’t believe this bullshit, do you?” Grant asks after a quiet moment.

“We should look at the ‘packages’ page before rushing out of here, at least, don’t you think?” Scott asks.

He wants to believe it. Wants to believe the words about clients resting easily with no harsh reminders of embarrassing childhood failures, deaths of beloved pets, or bad break-ups.

The first thing that catches his eye on the packages page is the statement that the first session is free.

“Too good to be true,” Aya murmurs.

“They’re harvesting organs,” Grant confirms.

As they scroll through the options, the lady they saw walk into the building when they first arrived comes out from the double doors, grinning broadly. But it doesn’t look unnatural or alarming. She looks genuinely carefree. She gives Conrad a cheery wave and leaves the building, and Scott doesn’t know why, but that’s when he makes his decision.

Aya and Grant also make a decision, but theirs is to leave, immediately. Cowardice has won over courage and Scott’s can’t really blame them.

He leaves too, but he’s going to return.

*

The boy is sitting, his back against a tree trunk. His long limbs stretch in front of him, his eyes are half closed. He looks like he’s been waiting for a while; something in the set of his shoulders, in the sprawl of his body. When he sees Scott across the expanse between them, he offers a grimace masquerading as a smile.

“Aren’t you uncomfortable?” Scott asks, not bothering to raise his voice. If he’s heard, he’s heard, if he’s not, there isn’t much he can do.

The boy nods that slow, terrible nod of his.

“I’m going to delete you,” Scott confesses, the words sounding as guilty as they feel as they trip off his tongue.

He doesn’t know why his insides churn when he’s sure this is the right thing to do.

“It’s not your fault. I know you don’t mean me any harm. But you’re a distraction,” Scott continues. He hovers from foot to foot, muscles and bones increasingly agitated, like they’re trying to shake out of his skin.

The boy watches Scott, uses the trunk behind him to push up onto his feet. Scott almost thinks he’ll advance, cross the distance, but he doesn’t, he remains static.

“So this is goodbye, I guess. Sorry I never understood what you wanted from me. Sorry if there was something I was supposed to do.”

The boy frowns in confusion, as if Scott’s words make no sense, as if he stopped speaking English.

Scott has tried other languages --- nothing worked. He’s finally resigned himself to the realization nothing will.

It feels like weakness, like fear, like giving up. It feels like freedom.

*

His heart is beating out of his ribcage and not even Conrad’s kind eyes and introduction to Dr. Morse is going to stop it. Scott mentally chastises himself for his initial thoughts that Dr. Morse is too young and too beautiful to be an actual, qualified doctor. Her long hair is tied back and her dark eyes stare at Scott like she’s looking down to his soul.

“I can’t guarantee this will work,” she says, words said with such precision it’s like she measured them on the high tech equipment surrounding Scott’s prone form. He shifts uncomfortably in the chair, reminded of visits to the dentist. “It’s experimental, untested under the circumstances you’re requesting. But I’ll certainly try.”

Conrad takes her aside, and Scott tries to look away, but in his nervous state his eyes automatically gravitate to the people around him, so he sees him mouth something like, “Test subject”.

When he’d been asked if this should be a standing appointment, Scott had said this would probably be his only session and, then, likely exuded poverty. Conrad’s demeanor had become even kinder, and now Scott thinks he knows why.

“This shouldn’t hurt,” Dr. Morse says, “So if it does, flail and scream or something, or I might not know when to stop.” She chuckles at Scott’s panicked reaction. “Just a little doctor humor there. You’ll feel a pinch, that’s all.”

Scott isn’t overly reassured. He rests his head back like she guides him, but his heart kicks up a racketing beat and his palms go sweaty.

“Think about the dreams,” Dr. Morse says, voice adopting a calm, warm tone. “Visualize and recall. I’m creating a map of your neurons’ pathways, analyzing the routes to disrupt.”

It occurs to Scott, minutes too late, that he’s participating in brain surgery – that even though they’re not cutting into his flesh, he’s still allowing these doctors to meddle with his mind.

He wonders what the boy would think, whether he’d emanate concern or frustration at his stupidity.

After Dr. Morse says the scan is complete, there are rapid flashes from the lights above and Scott becomes mesmerized by the pulse and strength of them.

Between each flash he sees the boy throughout the years; as a child, eyes his biggest feature and head shorn, as a young teen, acne-ridden and gangly-limbed. He sees himself surrounded by the oppressive brightness of the room that would haunt him, tiles shimmering, quickly supplanted by the forest dark and deep, roots spreading.

Scott's eyes ache, his temples sting and his senses work overtime to inform him of this. The more he thinks about it, the worse the sensation becomes. Pretty soon, it's all he can think about --- impossible to ignore.

"The procedure's finished," Dr. Morse says. It might be seconds later, it might be hours. "Conrad told me you'd be interested in becoming part of our new study. How do you feel about getting paid for treatments?"

Scott takes a moment to think about the treatment he's just gotten to help him with his sleep apnea, ensure he has a restful sleep He has a slight headache, but apart from that he feels fine. He and his mom need the money and he can't think what harm it would do. 

"Sounds great," he says, grinning as he lumbers to his feet. "I'll fill out the online survey tomorrow," he promises. "I'm looking forward to a night of undisturbed rest."

"I can't wait to read all about it," Dr. Morse says. Scott can't pin why her manner seems off.

* 

Scott's not usually paranoid, but he keeps seeing the same face in his peripheral vision and it freaks him out. Weeks have gone by and he'll walk down a hallway, or be in the middle of studying, or be talking to Aya and that face will creep into his field of view. Whenever he spins to confront his stalker, they're not there and he's forced to conclude it's his mind playing tricks. He reports it to Dr. Morse, thinking it might be a side-effect of his sleep apnea treatments, hoping it's nothing serious. 

It's not a horrible face. Whenever he gets to actually concentrate on it, out of the corner of his eye, he realizes it consists of pale skin dotted by sunspots, plush lips, angular cheekbones and warm, brown eyes. His age, he thinks, or close enough. In the beginning, he'd actually been disappointed there was never a person to associate it with. 

But it is concerning, how frequently the face flashes to the side of him, like a constant reminder of he doesn't know what. (But it feels important. How come?)

Dr. Morse calls him in for another treatment and not only might she be able to fix this, but he's been sleeping like a baby, and he needs the cash, so he cuts class and goes to the clinic, saying hi to all the regulars.

"You're not experiencing any other effects, are you?" Dr. Morse asks, deceptively casual in tone and strangely interrogative in eye-contact. 

"Just the occasional hallucination and headache," Scott confirms. 

Is that the wrong thing to say? Dr. Morse looks perturbed. 

"Lie back," she instructs. "Keep your eyes open and clear your mind."

Lights dance before his eyes and Scott drifts, glimpses striking him of a smile, a frown, an exaggerated downturn of lips, a roll of eyes, an unbearable fondness. He feels --- bereft, like he's missing something integral, like he's half the person he's supposed to be. It makes him squirm in his seat and he's vaguely aware of hands holding him down and Conrad's voice saying something that sounds suspiciously like, "Is it working? Are we getting through?"

Scott thinks he might throw up. 

*

Scott blinks awake and stares around the room. It's the first time he's fallen asleep during one of his treatments. There are muffled voices coming from behind the door.

"... you tell him?"

"And watch him suffer a mental break? He isn't ready, Fenris, and you know it."

"So we enable his delusions?"

"Yes. My brother was clear on this. We must coax him into the realization that this world he's built is an illusion of life. Not shove it down his throat."

Scott tips onto his side and sends one of the monitors to the side with a crash. His chest is tight, his pulse throbbing. It's possible they were talking about another patient. Likely, even. They had to have been. He's here for sleep therapy. Nothing else, nothing more. 

Dr. Morse walks into the room, calm and composed, reassuring as if she doesn't want to startle him. Scott finds himself backing away. He quickly course-corrects, doesn't want to be suspicious. 

"Everything all right?" she asks, smile sharp.

"Yeah," Scott lies. "Everything's fine."

*

There's a guy following him around the school. He's an inch or two taller than Scott, gives the impression of being lankier. He's simultaneously pale and dark. He's also handsome; arrestingly so. Scott's never seen him around before --- except _he has_ , he feels like he has, like he's familiar. Whenever Scott tries to stop and talk to him, he disappears, but Scott can hear his footfalls, his breathing, even though logically he knows he shouldn't be able to. He doesn't tell Grant, or Aya, or his wider group of friends and acquaintances, despite the fact they could keep watch for him. That seems redundant and he can't explain to himself why. 

He gets used to glancing over his shoulder, at scanning crowds. He becomes talented into dividing the surrounding cacophony around him into disparate sounds. Scott waits for him around corners, on the lacrosse field, while walking home. Waits to see or hear him when he's alone. But he only ever senses him when he isn't, when Aya has a hand wrapped around his arm, or Elise is sitting next to him in the cafeteria, when Grant and Freddie are trying to cajole him into lending them his notes.

Scott paces around his bedroom, thinking about it, considering Conrad and Dr. Morse's words. He isn't going back to the clinic. He feels sure their experimental sleep therapy was more experiment than medical aid. 

"Is everything okay, sweetie?" his mom asks one evening, when he's considering not going to bed. Maybe the image of the guy's been implanted in his subconscious to test whether that's a viable psychological warfare tactic. He's going to say yes, it is. 

He gazes into her green eyes, so unlike his own, and smiles. He hopes it's convincing. "Of course."

*

"Scotty," a voice says quietly. A voice that shakes him to his core, that makes him think of home and love and safety. A voice he thought was lost to him forever --- but he's never heard it before, has he? "You got me on tenterhooks here, man. I'm not gonna lie. I'm very concerned. Very." 

Scott slams into his nearest bedroom wall and stares. There's no one nearby. Not a figure, not a presence. Not even a mirage of one, a silhouette. Yet the voice persists. 

"I miss you. Every second. It makes me think of all the things I never told you. The things I promised myself I'd keep hidden. And now I have no idea why I wasn't honest, why I didn't come out and say it."

Scott's head is pounding, his body heaving in dry retches. He squeezes his eyes shut and sees a white room with a tree trunk in the center, a boy --- no, _the guy who's been following him_ , standing across the way, tear tracks down his cheeks. He paces as he talks, hands gesturing broadly. He swings closer and then ebbs away, like the tide. It doesn't seem like he's talking to Scott so much as at him, eyes always landing on their surroundings.

"I guess I always thought you knew how I felt, but didn't feel the same way, so I buried it, acted like it wasn't important. But what if you never knew how much I love you? How I'd do anything for you? I want you to know, Scott."

He remembers in an instant; growing up with this boy. And not just in the white room, not only in the forest, but in a small, unimpressive town, the two of them all each other had for so long. He remembers how he haunted his dreams, and how he kept his days filled with adventure. How he would gaze at him beseechingly from an interminable distance, and pull him tight into back slaps and hugs. He remembers the silence and the sarcastic rasp of his voice. And he _aches_ , every nerve, muscle and bone itching with the desire to hold him close and never let go.

"Stiles," he says, hushed like a promise.

Stiles swivels and fixes him with a look, mouth opening, cheeks sucking in. 

"Scott? You can hear me?"

Scott nods, energy draining from his limbs, mind a constant blur of too much information. Stiles surges toward him, hands wrapping around the trunk of his body and taking his weight as he collapses. 

"I can't believe they were actually right," Stiles says, wonderingly. "God, I thought all hope was lost."

Scott has no idea what he's talking about, but he doesn't care. He surrenders himself to the sensation of falling and all he sees is black.

*

He wakes up in the white room, slumped into Stiles' side. He doesn't want to move, sever their connection. It feels like he's gone an entire lifetime without it, even though he realizes that isn't true, that his memories have been tampered with. By himself. "What's going on?"

"You're trapped in limbo. I'm visiting, temporarily, Lydia and Malia tethering me to reality. Deaton says you've created your own little world to escape to as a coping mechanism. I've been trying to pull you out, but you've been ignoring me."

Stiles knocks into his side and Scott reflexively nudges him back.

"I tried to erase you," Scott says, stomach dropping. "Extinguish you from my dreams."

"I know, buddy, and I'd be totally offended if it wasn't Deaton and Morrell's method to get you to fight against your unconscious and subconscious minds. All they had to do was implant the idea it was possible to get rid of me, and suddenly half of you was thinking it's a great plan and the other half was waging war against it."

"How long have I been here?"

"A moon cycle."

"It's felt like years. Literal years, Stiles. When I first saw you in my dreams, I was a child. I thought of you as my imaginary friend. You haunted me, over and over."

Scott's confused, but he's sure of this --- that he was never fully able to scratch Stiles from his life, or replace him, that he always needed him exactly as he is in some form. Because he understands, now, that everyone else in his fantasy world was a faded facsimile of someone in reality. That his mind built it up to be convincing, but not perfect, not whole.

"Like I said; that was self preservation. Deaton says limbo drives you mad within hours if you don't find a way to combat it."

"Am I ever going to be able to leave?"

Stiles' expression softens and he holds Scott's hand gently. "I'm here to take you home."

"And then we'll talk," Scott states, decisively.

"About you not sacrificing your soul to limbo as an attempt to save my life?" Stiles says, tone spikey.

"About you not telling me you love me in a way where I can't easily respond in kind," Scott replies. He clutches Stiles' hand tight, refuses to let go.


End file.
